If there is no village to raise a kid, ask for help

Until last year, if you had ever asked me about favour-giving and favour-receiving I could have easily answered in hashtags. #Blessed #Gratitude #Humble #UnbearablySmug #Etc. Living in your hometown and close to family and cousins and new friends and old friends will do that for you. I was always two phone calls from anything I ever needed. Then we moved. My husband and I took a deep breath and considered independence-flavoured hashtags. Not bad, not bad, we said to ourselves. Over the months, we figured that when people say you need grit, what they mean is that you have to grit your teeth. We did a lot of gritting. Also grinning and bearing. Also muttering. Breathless week after week passed. The nice people we met in our first weeks who brought us rajma-chawal on moving day were also living breathless weeks so we rarely met. We worked, cooked, cleaned, took our kids to school and brought them back. On weekends, we did the same. Minus school. Plus Bluey and Paw Patrol.

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We need a community, my husband and I said to each other. And then did nothing about it. It was too confusing. One of us worked from home. We were exhausted. Other people were strange. We felt strange when we met other people. We were Other People. We just added more streaming to our devices or went to the playground where we avoided eye contact with other parents. What if they said something to us?

Cut to a few weeks ago when during a family emergency, my husband flew home. My kids and I stared at each other. I am sure they gritted their tiny teeth and filled their tiny lungs. Within hours of my husband’s departure, I knew that there was a slot 10 days down the line where I had to be in two places at the same time. One, at work. Two, the bus stop to pick up my children. In a flash, I remembered my friend Jayapriya telling me months after my first child was born, to bring home people and introduce my kid to them because “someday you won’t be able to meet him at the bus stop".

She had brought up her lovely daughter in half-a-dozen cities and had always known that the Bus Stop Dilemma would happen one day. When she had told me the story, I was like yes, yes. Not dismissive because Jayapriya had given me the best child management tips. I didn’t pay close attention to that particular tip because even during the pandemic, that first kid and his younger brother had not just a village, but a taluk and several competing block development officers. But eventually here it was, that exact Bus Stop situation.

At first, I tried to throw money at the situation. I asked whether the lady who had babysat my kids on two afternoons several months ago would consider coming. Leila Slimani, the author of the terrifying novel The Perfect Nanny, once said in an interview: “who looks after the children of the nanny?" In this particular instance, the prospective babysitter pointed out reasonably that she too had to pick up her children and had no one to cover for her. So that was that. I next asked four people in the city, one after the other. Each series of texts were accompanied by grinding of teeth and cringing of face. The scolding of another friend came back to me: You hate asking people for help! Back then I had yelled, “I just hate asking you!" and stomped off. Obviously, I know nothing about myself.

Since the children cannot be left on the side of the road, I persisted with the texts. One party had an office job so she wasn’t going to be able to do it. A neighbour who at least knew the kids by name was most willing to go pick up the kids but could only watch them for 15 minutes before she had to take her own daughter somewhere. A third friend was going to be at a conference but could leave for a while if I found no one else. A fourth friend had to pick up her niece from school and take her to dance class. She too offered to reorganise her week if I found no one else. Now it was like a reality show in which I had to figure who to trouble the most.

I am not exaggerating when I say that this dilemma occupied my brain for days. Somewhere in that week, I stumbled over a story on Maria Popova’s blog The Marginalian, which said that the way to make friends is to not offer help but to ask for help. Apparently, Benjamin Franklin swore by it and there’s some science in there also. Whatever it is though, it clicked loudly in my brain. To ask a favour, I had to step outside of my #insufferablysmug zone and be aware that I was obliged without necessarily a way of reciprocating right away. I had to let someone who hadn’t seen my kids in a year now see them in their post-school crankypants glory. I had to clean my house before she arrived and also laugh at myself for cleaning my house. I had to really stand back and admire my friend Ankita who crossed the city to help me and then went back to her conference, all the while thinking about a science problem that had been keeping her up at night.

“Don’t say thanks again!" she yelled as she was departing into the mist. Ah, being scolded by a friend. Nothing feels quite like home.

Nisha Susan is the author of The Women who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories. She posts @chasingiamb.

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